by Jo Bannister
The gibe struck home. Fair comment always does. Ash muttered resentfully, ‘You used to be more understanding …’
‘And you used to care about people you weren’t directly related to,’ snapped Hazel. ‘Now you hardly care what happens, as long as it doesn’t happen here or at Highfield Road.’
‘I’m sorry to be such a disappointment to you,’ retorted Ash. Beyond the kitchen door, the bitterness of his tone made the boys look up from their books. ‘But everyone grows up eventually. This is what being an adult looks like. Having responsibilities, and having to meet them even when you’re not sure how or even if you can. Having to put everything else on the back-burner because nothing, nothing, gives you the right to mess up children’s lives. Not being too tired, not being too busy, and not being distracted by other people’s problems.
‘Those children out there’ – he gestured jerkily – ‘exist because we made them. Cathy and I. They are about the only good things either of us ever did. And their mother deprived them of their father for four years, and then their father deprived them of their mother. I can’t undo any of that. I can’t wave a magic wand and give them nothing but happy memories. But I can be here for them now: always, every day. If that means not being available to play Batman and Robin with you, I’m sorry. I really am sorry, Hazel. I know how much I owe you. Maybe I don’t say it often enough, but I haven’t forgotten. Everything I have today, including those boys, I owe to you.
‘But don’t you see, having them is what ties my hands now. I’m not a free agent in the way that I was twelve months ago. It’s not that I think Elizabeth Lim’s problems aren’t important. It’s just that I’m pretty well fully committed – mentally, emotionally and in terms of hours in the day. However much I might like to help, I don’t have the spare capacity for projects.’
As soon as the word was out, he knew it was the wrong one. And if he hadn’t, the dark flash of Hazel’s eyes would have told him. ‘Projects? You think that’s what this is – a little hobby for me? Like needlework or stamp collecting: something to occupy my pretty little head and keep me out of mischief.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Ash said miserably.
‘You meant exactly that,’ insisted Hazel. ‘That someone with a family, or perhaps a more important job, would have better things to worry about.’
For a moment she teetered on the brink of pointing out how much he owed to her penchant for a project; and if she had, their friendship might have never entirely recovered. Some things can never be unsaid, or forgiven, or forgotten. At the last, though, she rowed back from rubbing his nose in her moral ascendancy. The essential kindness that underlay everything she did reasserted itself, and she just shook her head with a quiet regret that drove blades between his ribs.
She passed through the shop. ‘All right. You get on with being a responsible member of society, and I’ll go see if there’s anything trivial enough for me to waste a bit of time on.’
Both boys’ heads swivelled to watch her go. When the door had closed between them, the quiet click jolting Ash’s heart as a resounding slam would not have done, Gilbert left the book table and joined his father in the kitchen. ‘I suppose you know, Dad, you could have handled that better.’
‘Tell me about it,’ muttered Ash. Then, because he had a desperate need to strike out at someone, if only verbally, he growled: ‘Who are you, my mother?’
Don’t shoot the messenger, Patience said calmly, regarding them both from the kitchen doorway; and Gilbert cast her a puzzled look as he went back to his books.
TWENTY-TWO
By the time she reached her car, Hazel was having to stoke her anger to keep from crying. It wasn’t the first time she’d exchanged harsh words with Gabriel Ash. There were times when he’d behaved badly, there were times when she had. This was different. There was a sense of finality she had not had before. She was aware that things had changed which could never change back, and that in consequence the friendship she had so valued must either change too or break. There were no other options. The sense of loss ached in her throat.
Nor was she blind to the inevitability of this moment. Its seeds had been sown when he discovered that his sons, long feared dead, were in fact alive and well. Hazel had thrown herself into the campaign to bring them home with a determination and an energy matching their father’s, and this was what it had earned her: to be pushed aside as an irrelevance by someone who, it turned out, mattered more to her than a lover.
Hesitating on the pavement, with the car door open and the sights of downtown Norbold – the slab-sided concrete pillbox that replaced the pretty Victorian town hall back in the 1970s, the closing-down sale in the town’s one department store, some of the finest potholes in the county – blurred by unshed tears, for a moment she considered going back to Rambles With Books and trying to salvage something from the wreck of their friendship. What stopped her was pride. She was reluctant to admit how much it meant to her when it clearly meant so much less to Ash.
Pride has its uses. But Hazel was a realist: she knew that it destroyed more than it built. She would have swallowed hers if she could have seen a way that their next conversation could end on a more positive note than the last one. She would have apologised, except that apologising for misdeeds she hadn’t committed and statements she believed to be true could only make matters worse. If they weren’t going to be honest with one another, perhaps nothing they shared was worth saving.
Perhaps it was time to admit that whatever they’d had, it had run its course and come to its natural end. Perhaps she was behaving like a jilted ex, refusing to believe that someone she had once been close to had moved on. Was that what Ash saw when he looked at her now – a clinger? Someone desperate to turn the clock back?
She hesitated on the pavement no longer, but got into her car and drove out of Norbold with no clear idea of where she was going, only what she was leaving behind. A couple of miles into the leafy lanes of Warwickshire, however, she knew where she was heading.
The Harbingers’ housekeeper greeted her with as little enthusiasm as is consistent with common politeness, or slightly less. ‘Not again!’
A police officer goes many places where she isn’t welcome. It had never worried Hazel much. But she was surprised to be so instantly recognised, even out of uniform, by someone she’d never met. ‘Possibly,’ she said carefully. ‘Assuming I am who you think I am.’
Mrs Fisher sniffed disparagingly. ‘You’re from the police.’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Hazel, ‘and no. I am a police officer. I am not currently on duty.’
‘Detective Inspector Gorman didn’t send you?’
At least Hazel was able to answer honestly. ‘No.’
‘Detective Inspector Gorman,’ said Mrs Fisher darkly, ‘has spent so much time in this house recently that I’m beginning to wonder if I should make up a room for him and set him a place at dinner. He has strained the patience of this family severely.’
Hazel kept her expression blank. ‘I’m sure he’d be sorry to know that. But you do understand, he’s trying to save someone’s life.’
‘What a pity he didn’t try harder seventeen years ago!’
Seventeen years ago, Dave Gorman had even less seniority than Hazel had now, and no responsibility for policy or tactics. At the time the housekeeper was alluding to, he was doing foot patrols in a wooden-top helmet, seeing old ladies across busy roads and chasing truant children out of shopping centres. Hazel forbore to mention this, partly because of collective responsibility – an individual police officer and The Police were essentially the same in the eyes of most citizens, which was actually fair enough – and partly because the widow of Jennifer Harbinger’s chauffeur had every excuse for feeling bitter.
‘It must be very difficult for you,’ she said quietly. ‘That whenever these events are discussed, it’s Mrs Harbinger’s death that people talk about. As if she was the only innocent victim that night.’
Margaret Fisher looke
d quickly at her, and Hazel couldn’t tell what was going through her head. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘It was. It’s a long time ago now.’
‘I’m not sure that injustice is something that time heals.’
‘I’ve had a lot of support from my employer,’ said the housekeeper. ‘It helped.’
Hazel nodded. ‘I imagine he feels the same way. The rest of us can only sympathise. But you know exactly what he went through, and he knows what you did. That’s a bond between you that no one else shares.’
‘Except family.’
‘Of course. He has a daughter.’
‘I was referring to my son,’ said Mrs Fisher coldly.
Inwardly, Hazel winced. That momentary lapse had cost her ground in gaining the housekeeper’s trust. Honesty was probably the only thing that would help her now. ‘Yes, of course you were. I’m sorry, I’d forgotten you and Mr Fisher had a son. He works here too, doesn’t he?’
‘He’s the gardener.’ A flicker of a smile suggested forgiveness. ‘Really, he’s more like an estate manager. Any decisions regarding the house, Miss Jocelyn and I take together. Any decisions regarding the outside space, Miss Jocelyn and John take together.’
‘They must have known one another most of their lives.’
‘They grew up together. There’s only a couple of years between them. And of course, they too have something in common that they don’t have with anyone else. There’s never a good age to lose a parent, particularly in circumstances like that, but I think perhaps your teens is the worst time of all.’ Mrs Fisher frowned. ‘Is it Miss Jocelyn you’re here to see? I should have asked.’
‘Actually, it was you,’ said Hazel. ‘It occurred to me that we’ve talked to everyone else who was affected by these events, but I don’t think anyone’s asked if you remember anything helpful.’
‘Helpful …?’ The woman was clearly stunned. ‘You want me to talk about Mr Harbinger? About this foolish threat he’s supposed to have made when his heart was breaking on a daily basis? Do you imagine he told me he’d pushed the man responsible for Mrs Harbinger’s death into a reservoir – and because nobody asked me, it never occurred to me to mention this? Miss Best, if there had been a conversation like that, and I’d decided to keep it to myself out of loyalty to my employer, do you suppose I’d change my mind just because you asked about it?’
‘Mrs Fisher, I’m expressing myself very badly,’ Hazel apologised. ‘That’s not at all what I was thinking. I’m sure Mr Harbinger would never put you in that position. No one who thought as highly of you as the Harbinger family obviously do would ask you to choose between protecting their interests and protecting your own.
‘But seventeen years is a long time. It’s hard to understand now just how these events transpired, who knew what at what point, what they did about it, what they said to other people. After so long, people’s best recollections may be unreliable. Their memories may have been coloured by subsequent discoveries. They may honestly believe they saw or heard or said things which they didn’t, or not until later.
‘To be frank, Mrs Fisher, we’re not getting on top of this in the way we need to. That may be because someone’s lying to us, or there may be a degree of confusion because people’s memories aren’t as good as they think they are. If so, then the more people we talk to, the more cross-referencing we do, the sooner we can complete this investigation. I’m sure that’s what you want, too.
‘After seventeen years, there are only so many people we can ask. You’re one of them. You were intimately involved with the original events, and you’re still in daily contact with two other people who were. I’m not asking you to betray any confidences. I’m asking you to help me understand what happened, the effect it had on all concerned, and whether we’re even right in assuming that the robbery is the reason a woman who never did anyone any harm is now in fear for her life.’
Mrs Fisher looked doubtful, then she looked suspicious. ‘The Cho girl? She’d be – what? – mid-thirties now. I haven’t heard her name for years. Who knows where she ended up?’
Hazel bit her lip. But if the kidnappers knew, there was probably no reason to keep the truth from the Harbingers’ housekeeper. ‘She ended up in Norbold, as head teacher at the local school. After her parents died, she changed her name.’
The older woman was staring at her. ‘So close? I had no idea. And the son?’
‘That we don’t know. London, we think, but his sister has no way of contacting him.’
‘And you say she’s in danger?’
Hazel nodded. ‘Some men tried to kidnap her. It looks as if whoever murdered her parents finally tracked her down.’
‘Her parents weren’t murdered, Miss Best! Her father was unfortunate, or possibly careless, her mother was weak. No one is responsible for their deaths.’
‘That’s what the police thought at the time,’ agreed Hazel. ‘But somebody tried to snatch Felicity Cho from outside her school. I know that for sure: I was there. I would really appreciate any help you can give me.’
‘I suppose, if you have some questions, I could try to answer them.’ The housekeeper seemed to hear the reluctance in her own voice and felt the need to justify it. ‘You’ll appreciate, Miss Best, I don’t harbour any great fondness for the Cho family. That man’s actions resulted in the deaths of my husband and the lady I worked for.’
‘I know that’s the impression you were given. In fact, Edward Cho didn’t tip off the police. One of the thieves was recognised by a patrol officer. The Armed Response Unit thought they were rounding up a Post Office blagger, not a gang of art thieves.’
It was impossible to judge what was going through Mrs Fisher’s head, whether this information made the events of the past easier to bear or harder. She had spent years coming to terms with an account of her husband’s death which now seemed to have been inaccurate. It would take her more time again to process this new version and figure out how she felt about it.
Finally she said, ‘Does Mr Harbinger know this? Or Miss Harbinger?’
Hazel didn’t want to have to admit that she didn’t actually know. ‘DI Gorman has talked to both of them. But the details of what happened that day are still being put together.’
‘And you’re sure? You’re not going to come back in another week and say, “Actually, there’s more information again and now we think something different”?’
Hazel spread her hands helplessly. ‘I can’t guarantee that, no. This is what police work is like – we’re always working on the last best guess. But I think this is the full story. The bits of the jigsaw were always there, only no one took the trouble to put them all together. Now we have, this is the picture we’ve got. If someone killed Edward Cho because they thought he’d put the insurers’ financial interests above the safety of Jennifer Harbinger and your husband, they were mistaken. If the same person is trying to hurt his children, he’ll only stop if we can convince him it was a mistake.’
‘A mistake? A mistake? People have died.’
‘Yes,’ said Hazel sombrely. ‘Mr and Mrs Cho were probably murdered, and we may be able to prove it now. But that was seventeen years ago, when the wounds were still very raw. I think there would be a degree of understanding if someone who’d just lost his wife struck out at the man he blamed. I don’t think there’d be the same understanding if, all these years later, he attacked a woman who was only a schoolgirl when all this began. You talk about Jocelyn and your John being too young to lose a parent – well, Felicity lost both hers. And now she’s being hunted herself. If you can tell me anything – anything – to help us protect her, you must see it’s the right thing to do.’
Mrs Fisher fixed her with an accusing glare. ‘You are. You’re asking me to betray Mr Harbinger. To remember something that points the finger of blame at him. He’s a sick old man! He doesn’t need to be harassed like this.’
Hazel had a sense of matters balancing on a knife-edge. Whatever she said next could tip the housekeeper into
grudging co-operation or obstinate resistance, and the stance she took now she would maintain under the assault of anything less than dynamite. Hazel picked her words carefully.
‘He is an old man. And if he’s done something wrong – even something very wrong – that will be taken into account. He isn’t well. Losing his wife like that must have done terrible things to his mind. What happened seventeen years ago – to his family, to yours, to the Chos – is in the past and, sadly, there’s not much we can do about it. But we can prevent him – save him, if you like – from doing something wicked now. I think a real friend would want to do that, even if there was a cost involved.’
‘He’d go to prison?’ asked the housekeeper in a low voice. ‘In his condition?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hazel said honestly. ‘Some of this is speculation – we may not be able to prove what he did or didn’t do seventeen years ago. A slippery country road, a distraught widow – we may suspect, but we’d have to be able to prove that Mr Harbinger was responsible, and the ability to do that falls off dramatically even after a few days, never mind years. But if something happens to Felicity Cho now, the evidence will be fresh. We’ll know what we’re looking at, and what we’re looking for. We’ll find the man responsible. Someone who cares about that man needs to keep him from committing a crime now.’
She waited.
It was impossible not to see, and not to sympathise with, Mrs Fisher’s dilemma. The conflict was etched in her face. She would have walked over coals to protect Jerome Harbinger from anyone who threatened him. But what would she do to save him from himself? Still Hazel waited. She’d made the best pitch she could. Either it would succeed or she’d be shown the door.
Finally the woman said, uncertainly, ‘It’s not as if I know anything. I know what you know: that that poor man had his life ripped apart, and that he blamed the security company’s negotiator for selling us out. I know he threatened Edward Cho and his family. I understand, and I think you do too, that he wasn’t himself when he did that. Nothing that he said to me subsequently, and nothing that I overheard or saw, proves that he carried out that threat, or even attempted to.’
